This post continues my adventures in Self-Promotion. If you would like to read the first post on the subject, start here.

In case you were wondering, yes. I carry business cards. Some people may ask why, since I don’t provide a service or traditional product where I should need to be contacted directly. “Why not just do book signings?” I’ve been asked. Well, for one, I don’t have physical books on hand to do such. I’ve been researching print-on-demand through companies like Createspace or Lightningsource, but even then, carrying a ton of books around just to sign and hand out or sell isn’t feasible. What is? A business card.

Business cards are tiny. They’re just a sliver of card, they fit easily into a wallet or pocket. I can carry dozens of them at one time, and they don’t weigh me down.

Business cards make any encounter a potential for networking and sales. Never underestimate the power of networking–the person with whom you speak may not read your brand of fiction (or any fiction at all) but know someone who does. They could pass them along.

Business cards can make a sale even when you’re not around. I leave mine on community bulletin boards at work, at the grocery stores, with checks when I dine out.

Business cards can contain all the necessary information in a tiny package. While the front of the card has all the pretty colors and my brand (you know: “I’m In Your Universe, Exposing Your Brain.”), including a personal e-mail address and the address of my “publisher” Overlord M Press, the back is the real workhorse. It has the QR codes for Overlord M Press, and my author pages on Amazon and Smashwords.

Business cards are endlessly customizable. Use a little Google-fu and you can find hundreds of millions of places to get them. I used my own images (although I wasn’t terribly happy with the result, as the dark blue dropped out of the final printing) but overall they came out as I wanted them.

Business cards are cheap. They’re getting less and less expensive as more companies strive to print up a batch of quality-cardstock in order to secure your commerce for their other products.

What other products, you say? Well, T-shirts for one. I had one printed up that has my book cover on front and the aforementioned QR codes on the back. (This may not be an option if you’re paranoid about people following you with your camera, trying to scan the code. You are warned.) For me, my goal is to have a t-shirt for each of my books and novels and to choose the shirt to fit the venue. For example, if my stories about the American Revolution, In the Light of Liberty, were complete and published, I would make a shirt and wear it to the Gunmaker’s Fair I will be attending this weekend. Talk about networking without saying a word!

Don’t overlook the little powerhouse of the business card. You really can make it work for you if you are marketing on a budget.

Two weeks ago I brought up several stories which I call my favorites, and that naturally brought me to the idea of influence. You hear the phrases bandied about often by any creative types–“I consider such-and-such my greatest influence”, as in “As a composer, I find Mozart and John Williams to be my greatest influences” for an example, or directors cite earlier movies that formed their interest in the silver screen.

Certainly, as a writer, I count many, many authors and stories among my influences. All writers generally do–after all, that initial exposure to tales that transport us to other worlds or realities far from our own personal experiences engender the desire in some readers to craft our own. Fredrik Pohl, Harlan Ellison, Harry Harrison, John Haldeman, Doyle, Tolkien, Lewis, Shakespeare etc. all count high on my list of literary inspirations.

But… what about other influences, such as music? Take my first example, with music above. I frequently listen to music while writing, matching the mood/tone with whatever I am trying to write. Umbra (and all of its previous iterations) came flying from my fingertips with an ample dose of Alice in Chains, early Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden pounding in my ears. For my darker fantasy stories like “The Falconer and the Wolf“, one of my favorite bands to get me in the right atmosphere is Dead Can Dance. When sketching notes for The Light of Liberty, I turned to Barry Phillips and his version of “The World Turned Upside Down” along with other American Colonial period tunes.

Are there any more? Of course there are. Many people have incorporated their likes and hobbies into their writing. Some cozy mysteries, for example, are based around knitting. My character Ennid the Havoc and his escapades are influenced by my love of MMA (that’s Mixed Martial Arts for those not yet initiated into its primal awesomeness). My interest in genetics features heavily in Clones are People Two. Even if the things we like aren’t at the forfront, we sometimes insert it in small ways. I love goats (Casey, from Umbra), I think rhinos are awesome and I smith silver (both of which will appear in The Opal Necklace, release date TBD) and I’ve an interest in raptors and falconry.

It’s all very simple–EVERYTHING can be an influence on our creativity, and EVERYTHING should be. It’s from these somewhat disparate ideas and influences that some of our richest “juices” flow.

I’ve been far too long away from my entries, but my recent experiences with muzzleloaders merits a mention or two.

Among my myriad projects is the series I am planning and outlining based on the late American Colonial period, from the French and Indian War all the way up to the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Anyone who knows me knows that I love to write from experience–granted, I am NOT hoping that the world will collapse in an apocalypse so I can work through all of the situations I have and am putting Vera, Shaw and the rest of the Umbra crew through, but I’ve put plenty of r0unds through the firearms or similar arms that I mention in the novel.

So… working on Light of Liberty impressed upon me to fill a void. If I’m going to have Emory, Lucas and Seth setting the British Regulars in their (primitive) sights, I’m going to have to try this myself.

Luckily for me, I live very close to a few black powder enthusiasts, some willing to part with a little time and expertise with an author eager to listen and absorb.

The black powder beauty I got to fire was a 54 caliber double trigger model, similar to the one in the photograph:

With proper instruction in the safety measures and steps to load and fire, I have to say I’ve got a much deeper appreciation for our Founding Fathers going through the steps to do so. All the accoutrement needed, like a full “possibles bag”, powder horns or flasks, cartridge boxes, the heft of the rifle itself could take a toll on men marching through the woods (not to mention their subsistence gear!). After all that, it was a bear to load up and fire.

Anyone who has fired modern weapons may not understand that loading and firing is a relatively simple set of actions. For flintlock, not so much. Some may say they’re simple, but there are a lot of them, and messing up a step is easy to do! For example, there is a tool for removing the ball just in case you forget to add the powder[1]. Adding too much/too little powder isn’t catastrophic, but wasteful, especially when you consider the value and difficulty in obtaining quantities of black powder.

And… it’s messy and stinky. VERY stinky. Along with any proper firearms instruction, there is a session on cleaning. Black powder firearms seem to get filthy quickly. By my fifth shot, ramming the ball and wadding home took a lot of shoulder-power to get it through the yuck that was filling up the lands and grooves[2]. Lit black powder is also quite corrosive, and a good firearm can be rendered wonky (that’s MY term) by even a short period of neglect. So cleaning is essentially. Those who couldn’t stop and clean their weapons often, such as Continental soldiers, might use smaller balls and slightly thicker wadding to compensate.

As my instructor put it, “One has to wonder how the Indians lost, considering how long it took for the militia and British regulars to reload.”

So again, I reiterate how much more respect I have for those who relied on these weapons, especially those who could load and fire 3-4 times a minute!

(In case you were wondering, I made a few decent shots at 100 yards, including on the line between the 10 and the X. Not bad for someone who never shot a black powder rifle before.)

[1] Shockingly enough, I did NOT do this, although I fully expected to do so after my instructor warned me that this could happen. Because, you know, that’s what happens.

[2] Lands and grooves make up the rifling that gives the rifle their names. If they don’t have rifling, they are smoothbores.